Corpus-Driven Study of Translation Units in an
English-Chinese Parallel Corpus
Weiqun Wang 1
Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that texts are not translated word by word, but unit by unit.
Single words are polysemous and therefore ambiguous in translation. Corpus
linguistics, in monolingual context, has replaced the traditional basic notion of
meaning (words) with the extended unit of meaning. Accordingly, this paper argues
that in bilingual context, the translation unit, as the counterpart concept of the unit of
meaning, replaces single words as the basic unit in translation. This paper aims at
turning the study focus of parallel corpora from single words to larger units—
translation units. It shows how to extend a selected sample of thirty Adjective+Noun
(A+N) phrases into complete translation units by looking at their translation
equivalence in an English-Chinese parallel corpus.
1. Introduction
The prime achievement of corpus linguistics is to look at words embedded in context.
Represented by Sinclair (1991, 1996, 2004), corpus linguists argue that words will be
disambiguated if they are looked at together with their collocates. They thus extend
the basic unit of language from single words to the extended unit of meaning – the
lexical item (Sinclair, 1996, 2004; Teubert, 2005). Teubert (1996, 2001, 2002)
proposes that in a bilingual context, larger units, rather than the single words, should
be analysed to identify their translation equivalence. In bilingual or multilingual
contexts, the concept of a unit of meaning should be replaced by the concept of a
translation unit. He asserts that parallel corpora could provide a solution to the
problem of disambiguation because parallel corpora consist of authentic translation
texts and they are repositories of translation units and translation equivalents. In
practice, he has led the TranslationBase project at the University of Birmingham
which aims to provide ready-to-use translation equivalents in order to facilitate the
translation (see Chang et al, 2005). The aim is to turn the focus of bilingual or
multilingual parallel corpora study from single words to multiword units - the
translation units. Chang et al (2005) focused on the automatic extraction of EnglishChinese translation equivalence through statistical approaches. However, their
successes are limited because the statistical approach alone does not work, and many
of their extracted units are not expected translation units.
The unsuccessful attempt of the extraction by pure statistical methods suggests
that we need to describe the linguistics features before we can automatically extract
them. What this paper seeks to do is to identify the translation units by looking at their
translation equivalents according to the definition of the translation unit as the
1
Centre for Corpus Research, Department of English, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15
2TT, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
smallest monosemous unit in translation. It will also propose linguistic criteria for
identifying translation units. Based on the Hong Kong Legal Document Parallel
Corpus (henceforth HKLDC), the Adjective +Noun (henceforth A+N) phrases have
been extracted from the corpus. From these, thirty samples have been chosen and
treated as the node. The translation units and their equivalents have been studied. The
hypothesis is that each translation unit should have only one translation equivalent.
The paper aims to verify whether the above theoretical assumption is correct or not.
This paper will suggest how and when they could be expanded into translation units.
In this way, some of the characteristics and properties of translation units will be
described which hopefully could benefit other researchers in automatic extraction of
all translation units and translation equivalents.
The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 defines the concept of translation
units. Section 3 describes thirty A+N phrases and their translation equivalents overall.
Section 4 analyses those A+N phrases with a unique translation equivalent; and
Section 5 investigates those with more than one translation equivalent. Section 6
concludes the paper.
2. Definition of Translation unit
It is widely known that professional translators do not translate texts word by word.
They are normally translating large chunks, for example a collocation, as a whole.
These chunks, are called “translation-units” (Teubert 1996, 2001, 2002). In some
sense, translation units are centred on lexical words. “Lexical unit and relevant
context together form the translational unit” (Teubert, 1996: 256). What is more, the
translation unit is unambiguously translated. Ideally, it is “the smallest monosemous
unit in translation” (Teubert, 2001, 2002).
The equivalence of a translation unit in the target language is called a
translation equivalent (Teubert, 2001). The translation equivalent is regarded as the
“paraphrase” of the meaning of a translation unit but in the target language (Teubert,
2001:145). In other words, a translation equivalent is the meaning of a translation
unit in the target language.
A key theoretical assumption is that a translation unit is, ideally, monosemous,
which means that it will have only one translation equivalent. If it has more than one
translation equivalent, these translation equivalents should be synonymous and can
replace each other. If there is more than one target language equivalent and they are
not synonymous, then the source language expression is not yet a translation unit,
therefore has to be extended until it becomes a translation unit. In other words, one or
more context words have to be added to it until it becomes, from the target language
perspective, unambiguous.
Based on the above definition of translation units, this paper will propose three
linguistic principles as the criteria of extracting complete translation units: complete
principle, monosemous principle and minimal principle. Complete principle means
that a translation unit should be a complete unit of meaning in the source text, and its
translation equivalent is a complete unit of meaning in the target text. All the words
and even domains which help disambiguation should be included in the translation
units. Monosemous principle refers to a translation unit which should only have one
meaning -- represented in the target language as one semantic translation equivalent,
although sometimes the equivalents may have synonymous variations. The third
principle minimal principle means that a translation unit should be kept as small as
2
possible. Like the principle of Occam’s Razor, the simplest or smallest translation unit
is the best.
3. Extraction of Translation Candidates and Their Equivalents
The test bed for the above assumption is the HKLDC. The HKLDC is an EnglishChinese parallel corpus compiled at the University of Birmingham. It contains the
statutory laws issued by the Department of Justice of the Hong Kong S.A.R.
Government (http://www.justice.gov.hk). The whole corpus has more than 10 million
words (approximately 5.6M English and 4.6M Chinese characters). No matter
whether they are in English or Chinese text, Hong Kong bilingual laws have equal
status in legislation. However, linguistically, English is the source. The HKLDC has
been POS-tagged, and sentence-level aligned and the Chinese text is segmented. For
details please see Chang et al (2005).
A Perl programme is used to extract all the A+N bigram English phrases in the
HKLDC. This yields more than 9,000 A+N phrases with three occurrences and above.
Among them, thirty English A+N phrases have been selected to extract their Chinese
translation equivalents, listed in Table 1. The first column in Table 1 gives the
frequency of each phrase in the whole corpus. These thirty phrases were chosen
because they appeared to be promising candidates for translation units, and because
they occurred around 100 times (the highest frequency was 105 times and the lowest
was 88) 2 , which means they were not the most frequent ones but sufficiently frequent
to permit reliable conclusions.
Table 1: 30 A+N phrases
Frequency
105
104
101
101
100
99
98
98
97
97
97
97
96
96
95
A+N Phrase
straight line
legal officer
residential care
criminal offences
annual allowance
long term
human remains
conclusive evidence
written permission
public bus
personal representatives
first column
notifiable workplace
listed company
light bus
Frequency
94
93
93
93
92
92
92
92
91
91
90
89
88
88
88
A+N Phrase
legal adviser
registered dentist
postal packet
good order
special category
registered scheme
provisional registration
judicial trustee
internal combustion
final Appeal
necessary modifications
rateable value
restricted licence
reasonable ground
medical officer
2
These frequency figures are calculated by the Perl program which is used to extract the A+N phrases.
However, these figures can only be used to ascertain roughly how frequently the phrases appear in the
whole corpus. Different concordancing software may not yield exactly the same figures due to the
different design of the query (e.g. some software queries may not include capital letters). For example,
both ParaConc and the Perl program yielded 105 occurrences of the phrase straight line. However,
Concapp, a free concordancing program by the Virtual Language Centre of the Polytechnic University
of Hong Kong, yielded 106 instances of this phrase. Still, the results should be and actually are
approximately the same. This study will use only the frequency figures yielded by the Perl program
unless there is a fundamental difference between the figures in this study and the figures according to
other software.
3
The translation equivalents of the above A+N phrases are manually identified.
For each phrase, thirty sentences are extracted where the phrase occur. All the phrases
have their lexical equivalents apart from one case of a phrase. This zero
correspondence will be ignored in this paper.
All these thirty A+N phrases have been translated into nominal Chinese
equivalents except those of long term and four equivalents of good order. This will be
discussed later in Section 5. Among all the thirty A+N phrases, two-thirds have
unique translation equivalents. The remaining ten phrases have more than one
translation equivalent.
According to the number of their equivalents, the thirty phrases fall into two
groups: twenty phrases have one unique Chinese equivalent and ten phrases with
more than one. The 20 A+N phrases with a unique translation equivalent further fall
into three groups: The first type are complete translation units; they do not need to be
used with other words to form a whole unit of meaning. The second type are those
which have not been found being used independently; they are only part of complete
translation units. This type should be extended to bigger units to form complete
translation units because they are always used together with other words. These words
are indispensable in forming a complete unit of meaning. The third type are complete
translation units only in certain cases but in the remaining cases they need to be
extended to form complete translation units (see Section 4). The remaining ten
phrases are not translated into the same Chinese equivalents. These ten phrases have
more than one translation equivalent. They need to be extended to complete
translation units. Again, these ten A+N phrases can be classified into two groups
according to whether they have synonymous equivalents or not (See Section 5).
Semantically, the translation equivalents of the thirty A+N phrases fall into
three categories: 1) all the translation equivalents of an A+N phrase are the same; 2)
the translation equivalents of an A+N phrase are not exactly the same, but they are
synonymous; 3) the translation equivalent of an A+N phrase is neither the same nor
synonymous. They are different in meaning.
4. Analysis of Phrases with Unique Translation Equivalent
There are thirteen A+N phrases that can be regarded as whole translation units. Each
of them occur independently in the sentence and has only one translation equivalent,
or unique translation equivalent. For example, with legal adviser, the following
sample concordance lines show that they occur independently, without semantic
interference of other pre-modified lexical words or post-modified lexical words. They
do not have a strong collocability with other grammatical words either. All these
occurrences of legal adviser have been translated as 法 律 顾 问 . Therefore, legal
adviser is regarded as a complete translation unit and 法律顾问 as its translation
equivalent.
Figure 1: Concordance of legal adviser
d by him or by his friends or
ns as apply to a visit by his
d by him or by his friends or
ns as apply to a visit by his
ation Committee may appoint a
edure of the board. 116145 A
edure of the board. 116199 A
legal
legal
legal
legal
legal
legal
legal
adviser, under the same conditions as
adviser. 92095 Every prisoner awaitin
adviser, under the same conditions as
adviser. 92111 Every appellant may se
adviser to advise it on any points of
adviser may be present at any proceedi
adviser may be present at any proceedi
4
edure of the board. 116292 A
rtunity to communicate with a
al and to have letters to his
speak on the telephone to his
ommunicate and consult with a
33 a secretary; and 126934 a
57 a secretary; and 126958 a
legal
legal
legal
legal
legal
legal
legal
adviser may be present at any proceedi
adviser and to consult with him in the
adviser, relatives and friends posted
adviser, relatives and friends, unless
adviser. 117323 3. For the purpose of
adviser, 126935 to the Council who sh
adviser, 126959 to each board who sha
There are other twelve phrases fall in this category. These are: straight line, criminal
offences, annual allowance, first column, notifiable workplace, listed company, legal
adviser, registered dentist, postal packet, registered scheme, judicial trustee, rateable
value. Each of them has been unanimously translated into one translation equivalent
in Chinese.
The second type is those which are always a part of larger translation units.
There are four phrases belonging to this type and they have been listed in Table 2. The
larger units extended from these phrases, are listed in the middle column in Table 2.
Table 2: A+N phrases as Parts of Larger Translation Units.
A+N Phrase
Complete Translation Unit
Chinese Equivalent
special category
special category space(s)
特种舱
final appeal
(the) court of final appeal
终审法院
restricted licence
internal combustion
restricted licence bank
有限制牌照银行
internal combustion engine/12
内燃机
internal combustion type machinery/8
内燃式机械
internal combustion marine machine/2
内燃船机
internal combustion type propelling machinery/9
内燃式推进机械
All the occurrences of special category have been extracted by using the software
Wordsmith. The results have shown that whenever special category occurs, it occurs
with the word space, either in singular form (space) or in plural form (spaces). This
indicates that the phrase special category itself, in this corpus, is not an independent
unit but normally requires the company of the third lexical word in order to make a
full translation unit. In other words, special category collocates with space(s). All the
instances of special category space(s) have been translated as 特种舱 in the Chinese
text. Therefore, the complete translation unit should be special category space(s)
instead of special category.
Similarly, final appeal does not occur alone but with (the) court of final
appeal. In the translation, (the) court of final appeal has been translated as 终审法院.
This indicates that final appeal is only a part of a larger translation unit -- (the) court
of final appeal.
The situation is the same for restricted licence. Whenever restricted licence
occurs, it occurs as restricted licence bank. Throughout the corpus, restricted licence
has to go with the word bank in order to make the whole unit of meaning. The
Chinese equivalence of restricted licence bank is uniformly 有限制牌照银行.
The phrase internal combustion follows the same pattern as the above three
phrases except that it can be a part of more than one larger unit in this parallel corpus.
Four translation units are formed: internal combustion engine, internal combustion
type machinery, internal combustion marine machine and internal combustion type
5
propelling machinery. The frequency of each of these units has been listed in Table 2.
Each of the units have been translated as respective Chinese phrases.
Although their Chinese counterparts can be identified in the larger translation
equivalents, all these four A+N phrases belong to larger translation units since they
collocate with the words following them. Together with the words following, they
form another different concept. For instance, special category space is different from
special category in meaning. Thus, we argue that in this corpus, the bigger units
should be the complete translation units.
The third type is listed in Table 3. These examples can both occur
independently to form a unit of meaning, and also form another unit of meaning with
the other adjacent words. There are three of this kind of A+N phrases: personal
representative, public bus, and provisional registration.
Table 3: A+N Phrases Both as Translation Unit and as parts of Translation Units:
A+N phrase
Translation Unit/Freq.
Chinese Equivalent
personal representatives
Personal representative/35
遗产代理人
Legal personal representative/4
合法遗产代理人
public bus/2
公共巴士
public bus service/30
公共巴士服务
public bus
provisional registration
provisional registration/23
临时注册
certificate of provisional registration/9
临时注册证明书
Among the thirty-nine occurrences of the phrase personal representative, it occurs
independently thirty-five times; that is, it occurs without the accompaniment of any
other lexical words to form a unit of meaning. All these thirty-five examples of
personal representative have been translated into 遗产代理人. There are another four
occurrences where personal representative occurs with the word legal in front to form
another unit of meaning, legal personal representative. This new unit of meaning has
been translated as 合法遗产代理人. The word legal is polysemous in the English
monolingual dictionary, and has more than one translation equivalence in HKLDC,
e.g., 法 律 , 合 法 , 法 定 and 律 政 ( 的 ). In the translation of legal personal
representative, legal has lost the meanings of the other three translation equivalents
but all the four uses of legal in the phrase legal personal representative have been
translated as 合法的. The phrase legal personal representative is regarded as a new
translation unit although the translation equivalent of legal seems only to be added in
front of the translation equivalent of personal representative.
Public bus and provisional registration are similar to personal representative.
However, their dominant forms vary. For personal representative and provisional
registration, the independent forms personal representative and provisional
registration occur more than their extended forms (legal personal representative and
certificate of provisional registration). However, for public bus, the larger translation
unit public bus service occurs more (occurring twenty-eight times more than the
independent form public bus). The frequency of the different forms may only be
defined by the content of the text. Here we would like to focus on the translation
equivalents of these units. No matter whether they occur alone or as parts of larger
units, these three A+N phrases have been translated as the same equivalents. In other
words, all personal representatives have been translated as 遗产代理人, whether it is
6
used alone or in the larger unit legal personal representative. Similarly, all references
to public bus have been rendered as 公共巴士 , and all citations of provisional
registration have been rendered as 临时注册.
It may seem to be a theoretical notion that the larger unit should be regarded as
a new translation unit. In practice, the reader may feel sufficiently sure that he/she
knows what the translation equivalents of the A+N phrases are. In other words, they
may be aware that personal representatives is 遗产代理人 in Chinese, but may not be
aware that legal personal representative is 合法遗产代理人. They may ignore the
fact that these phrases can sometimes form larger translation units. They will only be
concerned with the larger translation units when they do not know how to translate the
whole (e.g. cluster, phrase, segment etc.).
5. A+N Phrases With More Than One Translation Equivalent
Among all the ten A+N phrases, there are six phrases that have synonymous
translation equivalents: light bus, written permission, necessary modifications,
reasonable ground, human remains and conclusive evidence. Their translation
equivalents are listed in the order of their frequency.
Table 4: The 6 A+N Phrases Whose Translation Equivalents are Synonymous.
A+N Phrase
1st TE/Freq.
2nd TE/Freq.
light bus
Written
permission
Necessary
modifications
Reasonable
ground
Human remains
conclusive
evidence
小巴/31
小型巴士/22
3rd TE/Freq.
4th TE/Freq.
书面准许/17
书面许可/7
书面批准/3
准许/3
必要的变通/20
必需的变通/7
需要的变通/2
必需的修改/1
合理的理由/16
合理理由/15
人类遗骸/41
遗骸/1
确证/27
不可推翻的证据/5
The two translation equivalents of reasonable ground, 合理的理由 and 合理理由, are
the two most obvious synonyms. The Chinese character 的 in 合理的理由 is used as
adjective suffix, which can be and often is omitted to achieve concision. These two
translation equivalents are actually one. They can, of course, replace each other.
The same is true for light bus. Both 小巴 and 小型巴士 are rendered from
light bus. 小巴 is an abbreviated form of 小型巴士.
人类遗骸 and 遗骸 from human remains are not synonyms if we consider them as
two separate terms. However, this impression will disappear after a careful look at
their context. There is only one case of 遗骸, but the rest are all rendered as 人类遗
骸. The context where this case happens is given in the following sentences:
54740 Where a person who has the right to effect the disposal of the human remains of any person54741 within the period of 48 hours after the human remains are received into any mortuary54740 如具有处置任何人类遗骸的权利的人─
54741 在殓房接收该遗骸后 48 小时的期限内─
7
Sentence 54740 and 54741 belong to the same semantic sentence in the text, but they
have been cut into two for the sake of alignment during the corpus processing. If we
read them together as one part of a whole sentence, we find that the two human
remains refer to the same object. The second human remains has been translated
differently because of the Chinese character 该 before 遗骸 in sentence 54741. 该
means such or this in Chinese. 该遗骸 means such/this remains, which refers to the
previously discussed human remains. Therefore, in this case, 遗骸 and 人类遗骸
share the same referential meaning because of the Chinese functional character 该. In
fact, the whole translation equivalent is not 遗骸 but 该遗骸. 该遗骸 and 人类遗骸
refer to the same thing; they are synonymous in this case.
Although written permission has more equivalent variations, its translation
equivalents are synonymous as well. The terms 准许, 许可, and 批准 are synonyms
and they mean permission. In the first three translation equivalents, the word written
has all been rendered as 书面. The first three equivalents 书面准许, 书面许可 and 书
面批准 are synonymous. The fourth translation equivalent 准许 is actually the
abbreviation of 书面准许 in this context, 书面 is omitted for the sake of the concision,
but it can be deduced while reading the translated text.
In the four translation equivalents of necessary modifications, modification has
been translated as the same 变通 except in one sentence as 修改. The three variations
translated from necessary, 必要的, 必需的 and 需要的, are synonymous in Chinese.
Therefore, the first three translation equivalents are synonymous. Since 修改 and 变
通 are synonymous as well, the fourth translation is synonymous with the previous
three.
Although the two translation versions of conclusive evidence cannot strictly be
called synonyms by linguists, they are to some degree synonymous. The literal
translation of 确证 is factual evidence while 不可推翻的证据 is the impossible
overthrown evidence. The similarity of the two translation alternatives is that in both
the evidence does exist, or is a fact or provides strong evidence. The difference is that
the former Chinese translation focuses on the evidence, while the latter emphasises
the impossibility of overthrowing the evidence. They do, in fact, share the same
meaning but focus on different elements.
There are four A+N phrases that have non-synonymous translation equivalents:
long term, conclusive evidence, good order, medical officer, residential care.
The two translation variations of long term are due to the different contexts.
In fact, long term forms part of another two larger translation units –long term
business and long term interest. In long term interest, long term is always translated
as 长远, while in long term business, as 长期. The different translations are caused by
the different collocations. Long term itself is not an independent unit of meaning; it
has to accompany business or interest to form a unit.
Both Good order and residential care are parts of larger translation units and
their translation equivalents cannot be identified without considering other words in
the context. The following is the concordance of the thirty extracted instances of
good order:
Figure 2: Concordance of good order:
1
60466 the maintenance of decency and [good order] in the stadium is prejudice
8
2 ner.
44679 maintenance of peace and
3 s;
54311 maintenance of peace and
4 ered, drained, lighted or maintained in
5 sanitary condition and shall be kept in
6 g Authority, and shall be maintained in
7 nd sanitary condition and to be kept in
8 articles have been delivered but not in
9 in a clean condition and maintained in
10 in a clean condition and maintained in
11 icer, and shall deliver the articles in
12 tion or of maintaining such shoring in
13 keep a public dance hall shall maintain
14 to keep a dancing school shall maintain
1558752 The licensee shall maintain
1658693 The licensee shall maintain
17 any stadium;
54566 preservation of
18 he notice:
54111 the maintenance of
19 nuisances;
54733 the maintenance of
20 ts of a detainee or in the interests of
21 his Part;
54434 the preservation of
22 shall not interfere with the running or
23 terest on the grounds of public safety,
24 n an offensive trade to be kept in such
25 be kept clean and shall be kept in such
26 be kept clean and shall be kept in such
27 noxious matters, and to be kept in such
28 noxious matters and to be kept in such
29 ion on any problem which may affect the
30 person to do any act prejudicial to the
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
[good
order] in any place licensed under
order] in any place licensed under
order],the Building Authorityorder] and repair.
56714 Every
order] to his satisfaction, by the
order] and repair.
56977 Every
order] and condition, of the damag
order] and repair.
57115 Every
order] and repair.
58655 Every
order] and condition, fair wear an
order] or of inspecting the same.
order] in the premises and shall n
order] in the premises and shall n
order] on the licensed premises an
order] on the licensed premises an
order] and prevention of abuses an
order] in slaughterhouses;
5
order] in public funeral halls.
order] in the Centre that a detain
order] and discipline and preventi
order] of the centre and is otherw
order] and security, the cost of t
order], repair and condition as to
order], repair and condition as to
order], repair and condition as to
order], repair and condition as to
order], repair and condition as to
order] or discipline of the centre
order] and security of the centre.
According to the concordance in Figure 2, good order can have three different senses
according to context:
1) good order is used to mean the good discipline of a place or premises. In this
sense, if a verb such as maintain or keep or affect is used before it, good order is
translated as 良好秩序 (1,2,3, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 22, 23, 29, and 30). If a noun
rather than a verb is found before it, such as maintenance or preservation, then
good order is translated as 秩序良好 (17, 18, 19, 21).
2) good order is used with maintain or keep to refer to the status of some object.
If the words following it are repair or condition, good order, together with the
verb, is translated as 保持完好 (5, 7, 9, 10, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28). Without the
words repair or condition following it, good order is translated as 妥善 (6, 8, and
14).
3). good order also means the property and sequence of certain articles. Usually,
the preceding verb is deliver. It is translated into 性能良好 (10 and 13).
Then we find that there are five translation units, with their respective translation
equivalents. All these extended translation units are shown in Table 5. Among their
five Chinese translation equivalents, only the first one is nominal phrase. The second
is adjectival phrase and others are verb phrases. Using a similar approach, residential
care can be analysed from the concordance and the result is listed in Table 5 as well.
In the first two translation units, residential care has been translated into 住宿照顾.
But the third translation unit residential care home has been translated as a whole --安
老院.
9
Table 5: Translation Equivalents of good order, residential care and long term.
A+N Phrase
good order
residential
care
long term
Whole Translation Unit/Freq.
Chinese Equivalents
(keep/maintain)… good order (in some place)/12
(maintenance/preservation of) good order (in some place)/4
(something to be kept /maintained… in) good order (repair or
condition)/9
(maintain) in good order/3
(be delivered in) good order (and condition)/2
residential care/1
residential care expenses/8
residential care home/34
long term interest/34
long term business/2
(保持某处)…良好秩序
(保持某处)…秩序良好
(某物被保持)完好
妥善(保养)
(保持)性能(和状况)良好
住宿照顾
住宿照顾开支
安老院
长远
长期
However, 公职医生 and 医生 from medical officer are more complicated. They refer to
two different kinds of doctors. The translation of 公职医生 is encountered in Chapter
136 2(1), while translation equivalent 医生 is found in 298A 2. They are from
different laws. Chapter 136 2(1) is the Interpretation part of the MENTAL HEALTH
ORDINANCE which was issued on 1 February, 1999. Chapter 298A 2, however, is
part of the PROBATION OF OFFENDERS RULES, which was issued on 30 June,
1997. The referential meanings are different in these two laws. One explanation is
that in the English version of these two different laws, the same term medical officer
has been used to refer to different concepts. When they are translated into Chinese,
the translators purposely chose different Chinese terms to indicate their difference.
Table 6: Translation equivalents of medical officer.
Phrase
medical officer
Chinese Equivalent
公职医生/18
医生/ 14
Context
In MENTAL HEALTH ORDINANCE
In PROBATION OF OFFENDERS RULES
From the above analysis, it can be seen that all these four A+N phrases need to be
further expanded to yield complete translation units: to long term needs to be added to
business or interest; medical officer needs to be added to its domain (the different
laws they occur); good order and residential care are more complicated and have
been expanded as listed in Table 5. Once a phrase has been expanded into large
enough units, the ambiguity between its several equivalents disappears. The most
complicated expansion of a translation unit is good order. It is important to note that
not only adjacent words to the left or right of that phrase should be counted into the
complete translation units, but also words with a little space in front of or behind the
phrase will count as well, as in good order. Sometimes even the whole domain will be
a factor which helps to disambiguate as, for example, with medical officer. Therefore,
the different domain should be included in the complete translation units as well.
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6. Conclusion
In this paper, I have demonstrated how to extract complete translation units based on
thirty A+N phrases from HKLDC. The thirty A+N phrases have altogether been
expanded into 43 complete translation units. This work has been done based on the
following hypothesis. If the translation is consistent, a translation unit has only one
translation equivalent; if a translation candidate has more than one translation
equivalent, either of these equivalents is synonymous or the contexts are different and
the candidates belong to different translation units. The candidate, accordingly, needs
to be extended to larger units and into complete translation units, until their translation
equivalents are unambiguous. This result can be useful in the automatic extraction of
translation units and translation equivalents. This hypothesis has in turn been verified
by the extracted translation units and their equivalents.
This is only a preliminary study that was able to analyse thirty typical A+N
phrases based on the specialised HKLDC. Since the legal document belongs to LSP
(Language for Specialised Purpose), this work may have generated some characters
which a more general corpus may not have. The methodology and results should be
tested with a larger scale general corpus studies.
Acknowledgement
This is a perversion of my MPhil thesis. I would like to thank Prof. Wolfgang Teubert
for provide the corpus and supervision, and thank Dr. Pernilla Danielsson for the data
extraction.
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